Curiosity beams backs its first full-colour Martian panorama

This excellent panoramic image (click on it for a much larger
size) is the first colour photo showing the landscape and distant
Mount Sharp sitting in front of the Curiosity rover. It is the
first photo taken with the probe's
MastCams, the main workhorse cameras that sit high atop its
head.

A large flat plane that is the base of Gale crater, where the
rover landed on 5
August, can be seen all around Curiosity. In the background is
its eventual scientific target, Aeolis
Mons -- aka Mount Sharp -- as well as a hazy pink Martian
sky. In the foreground, you can see grey bedrock that was singed by
the rover's rockets during landing. Scientists are eager to check
out these areas since they offer a small peek into the Martian
subsurface at Gale crater.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Click to view the panorama in full resolution

Within the coming days, Curiosity will get ready to start roving
across the Martian surface, poking and prodding at different rocks
to untangle the complex history of water on Mars. Engineers are
using pictures from the MastCams and the rover's Navigation Camera
to plot out the eventual pathway that Curiosity will take, choosing
the most interesting targets for study.

The MastCams slowly rotated to take this panorama over the
course of an hour and six minutes. This photo is not at full
resolution but instead is stitched together from 144x144-pixel
thumbnails that the rover sends back early using its limited
bandwidth. The high-quality images, which are nearly 10 times
larger, will likely take a few days before they can be beamed back
to Earth. The picture is taken in "true colour," or approximately
what your eyes would see if you were there with Curiosity. It has
also been brightened slightly because it was taken in the late
afternoon Martian sunlight.